Geography in the United States. — Davis. i 59 
Survey sets a high standard for triangulation, coast maps, and 
tide and current studies ; we have held a prominent place in 
Arctic exploration, and have taken some part in exploration 
elsewhere. But in spite of all this accomplishment, we have 
not made great contributions to the full-fledged science of geo- 
graphy. There are, for example, few steps toward scientific 
geography of greater value than good maps, but for the geog- 
rapher to stop with the production of good maps is as if the 
botanist stopped with the collection of dried plants. The sur- 
vey reports of our various States and Territories contain a 
great fund of geographical matter, and some of the members 
of these surveys have carried the physical geography of the 
lands so far forward as to develop it into a new science, to 
which a name, geomorphy or geomorphogeny, has been given : 
yet geography has not flourished among us as a maturely de- 
veloped subject. The survey reports have not, as a rule, been 
prepared by persons whose training and interests were primar- 
ily geographical, and very few of the geomorphogenists have 
carried their new science forward into a geographical relation ; 
they have usually stopped with the physical aspects of the sub- 
ject, and left the organic aspects with scanty consideration. It 
is as if there had been some impediments in the way of the full 
development of geography as a maturely organized science. 
There are in fact three serious impediments. 
During all these years, geography has suffered greatly from 
being traditionally a school subject in its educational relations; 
the subject as a whole has been almost everywhere omitted 
irom the later years of college and university training, al- 
though certain of its component parts have received some at- 
tention in college years. Again, geography as a whole leads to 
no professional career outside of school-teaching : it is. perhaps, 
chiefly on that account that our colleges and universities can 
give little time to it. Finally, there is not today in this ct:)un- 
try an organized body of mature geographical experts at all 
comparable in rank to the bodies of physicists or of zoologists 
which are organized into effective working societies ; in the 
absence of such an organization geography suffers greatly for 
the lack of that aid which comes from mutual encouragement 
among its workers. How can we remove these impediments of 
